


honey, you're familiar

by hoper_dreamer



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caleb Widogast Needs to Get Fucked, Caleb is a bisexual disaster, Canon Compliant, Hate Sex, Lucien is a horny motherfucker, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, YES IT IS BOTH, we all miss mollymauk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:15:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28921908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoper_dreamer/pseuds/hoper_dreamer
Summary: Lucien has questions. Caleb tries to give answers.Nothing truthful is really told.Tension is released.
Relationships: Lucien/Caleb Widogast, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast (background)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 232





	honey, you're familiar

**Author's Note:**

> come follow me on tumblr at gayandgoldenhaired  
> lucien's evil but like............... still sexy tho

Lucien knocked on the door in quick raps—so different from Mollymauk, who wouldn’t have knocked, who would have just flounced his way in yammering about something. No, but Lucien was more… persistent. More specific in his actions. He had plans, Caleb knew. Caleb wished he knew his plans more. Just as he wished he didn’t see Mollymauk every time the damned man smirked. 

“Off, Greta.” The fey cat who had been snoozing on his lap jumped off with an annoyed yowl. “Yes, I know. You’re terribly abused.” 

Caleb opened the door to see Lucien leaning against the doorframe, looking near-bored with his arms crossed. He’d removed his normal shirt—for bed, Caleb presumed—putting all his tattoos and embedded eyes on full view. “Can I help you?” Caleb asked, not bothering to hide the annoyance in his voice. “I told you about the rope to summon the cats—“

“Oh, I don’t believe the cats can give me what I want.” He turned towards Caleb, gripping the top of the doorframe with one lavender hand. The red eye locked in the snake tattoo gazed at Caleb, and he tore his own eyes away from it to look at Lucien’s face. His own red eyes gleamed with the same intensity. 

Caleb’s pulse quickened. “And what is that?” His hand found the copper wire in his pocket, ready to send a message to one of the nein if it seemed he needed to. If he could be faster than the man before him. 

Is he a man? In that way? Caleb wondered, briefly, erratically. Molly was more. 

“Answers,” Lucien said easily. “About that bit of confetti who wore me for a spell.” 

Caleb blinked. “I thought he did not matter to you.” 

“Oh, he doesn’t. Not to me. But he does to all of _you.”_ Lucien grinned, leaning in while still gripping the doorframe. His muscles—lean, _so lean,_ but _there,_ like a moorbounder—tensed and sharpened on his bare arms. “And one can be curious about something that doesn’t matter, yes?” 

“Maybe so.” 

Lucien released the doorframe and clapped his hands together. “Good. Glad we agree. Now, are we going to have this conversation while I’m standing in your strange little tower, or can we do this in more comfort?” 

Caleb was tempted to leave him there, but he could almost hear Yasha’s voice in his head— _what if it’s him in there?_

She called her own hope foolish. Caleb would be a fool to himself if he didn’t admit he harbored the same hope. 

“Come inside.” He stepped from the door and waved Lucien in. “There are seats, books, cats—“

“Seems a perfect haven for you.” Lucien sat down, leaning forward, on the chair Caleb had just vacated. Greta was long gone. 

Caleb sat on the chair across from Lucien. _Need a cat for this._ He snapped Frumpkin onto his lap and commanded him to purr. Frumpkin obliged. 

Lucien said nothing. His eyes never left Caleb’s face, and he felt the back of his neck grow hot. 

There was a difficulty in Lucien. Caleb hated him—hated his cult, his goals, his awful manipulation of them, those eyes. But he couldn’t hate his face. Caleb looked at Lucien’s face and saw no one but Molly—Molly, alive, and no longer in that earth on Glory Run Road. Breathing, and looking at him, and ready to tease him at a moment’s notice. It only made Caleb hate Lucien more when he spoke and wasn’t him. 

“Are you going to say anything, or just waste my time?” Caleb snapped. 

Lucien chuckled. “All right, I’ll be a _good boy.”_ He smirked, and Caleb _knew_ his cheeks reddened. “Want to keep this tower, after all. Much better than the elements.” 

“Of course. That’s why I prefer to cast it instead of the dome. When no one dispels it.” 

“Remember what I said about condescension.” 

“Just get on with it.” 

“All right!” Lucien raised his hands in mock surrender. “The angel-blooded one.” 

“Yasha.” 

Lucien waved his hand in dismissal. “Yes, her. She mentioned a circus? Was he in a circus?” 

Caleb’s mouth turned up. “Yes. They met while working there. She was a bodyguard, he was an act. Even read tarot.” 

Lucien’s mouth twitched. 

“Not a fan of tarot?” Caleb asked. 

“Charlatans, the lot of them.” His tone was too casual. Forced. Caleb filed that away for later. “Yasha, however. She seems most upset at my—well, not being him.” 

“They were very close.” Caleb said shortly. “If you want to know more, you’ll need to speak to her.” 

Lucien leaned back and crossed one long leg over the other. “Hmm. So I come in here, you promise to answer my questions, and you refuse me.” He clicked his tongue. “Not the finest hospitality.” 

“I’ll tell you what I care to tell you and what I _can_ tell you.” Caleb could feel heat inside him building _._ “I won’t tell you what isn’t mine to say. If you can’t accept that, then leave.” 

Lucien nodded, apparently musing. “All right. Then answer this: how did he die? How did I end up in the grave?” 

Caleb sighed. He scratched aimlessly at his scars. “Some of us were kidnapped by a slaver. We tried to save them. The slaver killed Mollymauk as a message to us.” He shrugged noncommittally even as his mind flashed with images—blood pouring from the cuts on Molly’s neck, the glaive punching a hole through his chest, his eyes—those bright red gorgeous ridiculous eyes—fading to lifelessness. 

Lucien traced the ragged scar in the middle of his chest with one rough fingernail. “That explains this one, then.” 

Caleb nodded mutely, and Lucien just kept tracing that scar. “Glad I don’t know what that felt like,” he said. “Must’ve been a doozy.” 

“Must have been.” Caleb snapped Frumpkin away and stood up. He crossed to the door in a few long steps, determined to put space between himself and Lucien. “That’s all I can answer for you, _unfortunately_. So how about I have a cat show you back to your room?” 

Lucien laughed shortly. “You think that’s all I want to know? Some vaguaries about a circus, a non-answer about the aasimar, and how he died?” He stood up, approached him. “No. I have another question. What was he to you?” 

Caleb’s breath caught in his throat. “A friend.” 

“A very _good_ friend?” The snake eyes were glowing. Caleb imagined he could hear slithering. 

“We didn’t know each other long.” 

“Ah, but it’s amazing what can happen in a short time.” Lucien was very close now, Caleb half-noticed. Caleb knew he should move, should open the door, but his limbs felt like stone and his head felt hot and swarming. “Look at the impact he left on all of you. You see me, and you mourn. And you hate. And you _hope._ ” 

“It’s only natural for us to miss him,” Caleb said. “He was a friend. A good friend.” 

“Yes, but you wanted him to be more, didn’t you, Caleb?” Lucien stood maybe a few inches away from Caleb, now. His red eyes met Caleb’s perfectly. _Amazing,_ Caleb had thought, _that he and Molly were just about the same height._ It had made that kiss on the forehead Caleb couldn’t forget so much easier. 

“I didn’t know him long,” was all Caleb could say. 

“But something _could_ have happened,” Lucien said. “You look at me, Caleb Widogast, and I don’t just see pain in your eyes, or anger, or hope. I see _desire.”_

“I—“ 

Lucien crushed his lips to his, swallowing his protest. His lips were hot and the kiss was hard and his teeth were sharp, and Caleb _knew_ he should pull away, he knew he _must—_

But instead his hand found the back of Molly’s— _Lucien’s_ —head and grasped a handful of curls. And he kissed him. 

Lucien grinned against his mouth, and Caleb’s stomach twisted. “Thought so.” 

Caleb tore himself away, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “What’s your fucking angle here?”

Lucien leaned against the bedpost. His tail curled around his feet, dancing. “No angle. No tricks, I promise.” 

“Yes, and _now_ you are being honest.” 

He placed one hand over his heart and raised the other. “As the grave.” 

“Get out.” 

Lucien rolled his eyes. “I’m serious. No tricks. Do you _know_ how long it is since I’ve gotten laid?” 

“Depends. As Molly, or…?” 

“Hilarious. Look. I don’t care about you, and you don’t care about me. But you _very clearly_ haven’t had sex in, gods, _far_ too long, and neither have I.” Lucien pressed his bare chest to Caleb’s clothed one. “One-time thing. Our little secret. No influence on anything from here on out, hmm?” He mouthed at Caleb’s neck. “No harm done between _allies_.” 

“You are a horrible person,” Caleb said. 

He felt the burning lips curl on his skin. “Now you know how to charm a man.” 

Caleb should have opened the door and shoved Lucien out. He should have not said another word to him that night and simply ignored him the next morning. He should have banished all thoughts of sex and anger and _Molly_ and _Lucien_ and just planned for the rest of their journey. But instead he let Lucien pin him against the door. He let him grab his hip and let him grind his pelvis against his hardening cock. He let him take his lips in a vicious kiss, sharp and needy. 

And Caleb kissed him back. And he ground his hips in return. And he wound his arcanist’s fingers into Lucien’s long purple curls and _pulled,_ just to hear the quiet moan he somehow knew he’d make. 

This was some terrible culmination, he knew, of everything surrounding the past year. Jester and Fjord, curled like commas into each other in the dome. Essek’s betrayal and the way that _didn’t_ calm the fire Caleb felt in his stomach every time he saw him. Mollymauk. His death. The grave, digging. Lucien. The care, the annoyance, the attraction he had for Mollymauk and the hatred, the annoyance, the attraction he felt for Lucien combining in this one unwise choice. 

Really, the countless unwise choices over the night. To turn his lavender skin indigo with a mark of his creation. To listen to Lucien’s incessant moans and cries and words, and to respond to them— _good boy, shut up, you like that?_ To take control of him, in the only way Lucien would ever allow him to, and to let Lucien take control of him in turn. To wrap his arcanist’s fingers around Lucien’s cock and feel joy when he spills hot over his hand. To fuck into Lucien like he was someone else—someone else purple, someone else who was kind--and carve lines on his tattoos with his nails. To kiss Lucien so deeply that he exhaled his inhale. To find his release in a man he hated, his enemy, and not feel shame. 

There were many choices made that night. There were many questions Caleb had after Lucien pulled his trousers back on and left with a swish of his tail and a too-casual “See you in the morning.” There were no answers. Caleb did not want to know the answers—to know if the cognouza saw that and was pleased, to know if Mollymauk was still in Lucien, to know if he had ruined everything.

Caleb lay on his bed, naked and filthy, and thanked all the gods and his arcane skill that he wouldn’t have to wash these sheets. After a time, he dressed and floated to the ninth floor and entered the ninth door. He sat at the bar and drank ale served by cats that wouldn’t be there in the morning, and Caleb Widogast thought and drank until he fell asleep. 

  
  



End file.
